Bear Grylls may not have anticipated the obstacles he would have to scale in his effort to get planning permission.
Photograph: Discovery Communications

The television adventurer Bear Grylls may have endured some of the most extreme conditions on the planet, but his survival on a north Wales peninsula is now under threat.

The Old Etonian, who has a personal fortune worth £6m, has gone head to head with a rural council over his plans to develop a local beach.

Grylls, who is best known for his extreme nature feats including scaling Arctic glaciers and becoming one of the youngest people ever to climb Everest, has submitted plans to build 25 beach huts at a tranquil spot on the Llyn peninsula.

He is part of a business consortium applying for consent to develop empty land it has bought at Mynydd Tir y Cwmwd in Llanbedrog, which is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).

But the former SAS soldier has come up against his toughest adversary yet, the tiny Llanbedrog community council.

The application has enraged the council and local residents, who are strongly opposed to any development taking place at the beach.

Councillor John Jones, who described the beach as iconic, said there was increasing local resentment towards developers.

“The beach is absolutely beautiful and the last thing we want are beach huts,” he said. “There is no need, and the only reason for them to do this would be to earn a quick buck.”

A dilapidated beach hut in nearby Abersoch sold for an eye-watering £153,000 earlier this year. Measuring just four metres by three (13ft by 9ft), it had no electricity or water and the owners were banned from sleeping in it overnight.

Just a few miles away there was a two-bedroom house in the village of Llanbedrog - and a seven-bedroom terraced house at Tywyn across Cardigan bay - on sale for the same price.

“Everyone is up in arms about this. We have had developers come in, knock down beautiful Welsh cottages and replace them with huge monstrosities,” Jones said. “Yet, someone like me who has lived in this village my whole life has been trying to get planning permission for five years to build a house and have not been allowed to.

“We are just questioning what their intentions are. It is beautiful as it is, and this would not be an appropriate development.”

Backed by dunes, the beach is accessible only via a track and is popular with windsurfers, surfers and canoeists.

“What else are they going to propose in the future?” Jones asked.

“The headland and beach is safeguarded as a site of special scientific interest and no one wants to see any development at all in this corner. We will fight by any means necessary to stop any development, large or small.

“We don’t want our beach ruined by beach huts.”

This is the second time Grylls, an evangelical Christian, has come up against locals in the area. In 2013 he was forced to remove a steel slide on his private island to avoid a showdown with planning officials.

Grylls installed the slide on St Tudwal’s West, about half a mile off the Llyn peninsula, and posted a picture on his Twitter page. His tweet prompted Gwynedd council to investigate whether he had broken planning regulations because the island is an area of outstanding natural beauty.

He also had to compromise over plans for a £580,000 harbour on the 380-metre long island. Grylls bought the island in 2001 for £95,000. He, his wife Shara and their three sons split their time between it and their other home, a Dutch barge in London.

The most recent application has been submitted by Gryll’s business partner, James Nichols of the Llanbedrog Headland Company, which has its headquarters in a leafy part of Cheshire.

The application states they are aware that the site is a SSSI and hope to discuss these issues with the local authority. It says: “We wish to hold a pre-application meeting to discuss proposals for beach huts and potential tourism-related schemes at Mynydd Tir y Cwmwd.

“The proposals are at a very early stage of formulation, as we wish to meet with the council to understand its aspirations for the area and discuss the principle of the proposals.

“Given the nature of the unique proposals, as well as landscape and environmental designations relating to the site we are keen to meet in person to discuss the proposals.”

Peter Brett Associates, the agents acting on behalf of Nichols, did not respond to a request for a comment.

Gwynedd council confirmed they had received a pre-planning application for the beach huts. A spokesperson said: “The council’s planning department has received an application for pre-application advice regarding beach huts in the Mynydd Tir y Cwmwd, Llanbedrog area.

“This is a process undertaken before an applicant decides whether they intend to submit a full planning application.”

In 1998, at age 23, Grylls became one of the youngest people to climb Mount Everest. He also once and rowed naked in a bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for charity and circumnavigated the British Isles on a jet-ski.

The Bear Grylls Survival Academy, which offers a range of courses to the public, operates in the US, the UK, Australia and Zimbabwe.

He has previously attracted controversy in Britain for allegedly taking part in a tax avoidance scheme and for staging some scenes in his television programmes. In August last year, he caused an outcry after posting a photo of his 11-year-old son, Jesse, on social media standing on rocks in the middle of the sea without a lifejacket.